Rock and hope: Highlands concert for Sandy relief

Nov. 26, 2012

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@OglesbyAPP

Southside Johnny (left) performs Sunday at the Hope for Highlands Concert, an event to raise funds to offset the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy and begin the rebuilding process in this seaside community. / MARY FRANK/Staff photographer

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HIGHLANDS — Just blocks from piles of discarded appliances and mounds of contaminated debris, thousands of people gathered to hear a concert that would help rebuild storm-ravaged Highlands.

At the Seastreak Ferry landing in the borough, volunteers collected donations and gave out food to visitors who came to the Hope for Highlands concert. There, musicians sang on a stage just feet from an ocean that a month before flooded more than a thousand homes in the area.

About 1,200 Highlands homes were severely damaged by superstorm Sandy, and more than 400 of those will have to be completely rebuilt, Mayor Frank L. Nolan said.

“Most houses had at least 31/2 feet of water,” Nolan said. “The high tide in the morning (of the storm) never went out.”

About 130 Highlands residents were displaced to a local shelter for about two weeks, Nolan said.

Concert organizers hope the event will raise enough money to help rebuild the working-class community. In the downtown area most severely affected by the storm, the average income is about $50,000 per household, Nolan said.

“There’s not a lot of extra money laying around,” he said.

Also, “the businesses were devastated,” said Rick Korn, who produced the benefit concert.

About 500 downtown jobs were eliminated by the storm, the mayor said. Some businesses are slowly reopening, but many employees remain out of work, he said.

Concert organizers hope the money raised will help patch the physical and fiscal holes that insurance and the Federal Emergency Management Agency will not cover.

“This is really a point now (with the concert) where we’re turning the page,” Nolan said.

As the first to take the stage, 13-year-old Max Kyrillos — a seventh-grader at Rumson Country Day School — opened the show with his solo electric guitar, playing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

“It’s going to take years to rebuild,” he said before performing. “It’s never going to be the same. ... I think it can get better, and I think New Jersey people can get stronger because of this.”

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Musician Lisa Lowell strummed her guitar on the ferry before taking the stage herself. Having grown up in nearby Long Branch, and with a mother and sister still living there, Lowell said she wanted to help.

For the concert, she would play “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

“It’s a song of survival,” Lowell said.

Out among the crowd, Highlands resident Trish McKeon considered herself lucky because only the first floor of her home sustained any damage.

“(Hurricane) Irene was like a hiccup compared to this,” she said, adding that the rest of the town was devastated. “I’m lucky because my house is habitable.”

Tears rolled down McKeon’s face as she described the borough where she has lived for more than eight years: middle- and working-class neighborhoods devastated by flooding, giant piles of storm debris in yards, families with no money to find new housing elsewhere.

“There are people who are homeless,” McKeon said as her 3-year-old son T.J. wrapped his arms around her throat to comfort her. “They need money. ... They need places to live.”

Vocalist Layonne Holmes led the concert with the song “Higher Ground” at the ferry landing, where traces of the flooding could still be seen nearby in piles of beach sand mixed with debris.

“We’re a resilient little town,” said Highlands resident Gary Filippone Jr., who stood in the crowd listening the concert. “I think we’ll be all right.”